Is this how Nahri felt? Ali recalled his friend on the night before everything had gone so terribly wrong. The longing in her voice contrasting with the sounds of celebration as they sat together in the hospital and spoke of Egypt. The night she’d touched his face and urged him to find a happier life.
The night Ali realized too late that his heart and his head might be taking different paths when it came to the clever, beautiful Banu Nahida. And though he was not arrogant enough to believe his world had been punished for the beginnings of a forbidden attraction he would never have acted on, it didn’t help his guilt.
You shouldn’t have left her at Yaqub’s like that. Ali might have been senseless with grief, but it had been cruel and selfish to have vanished without a word. Nahri probably would be better off without him, but that was still her decision to make.
So he’d make sure she could.
IT TOOK ALI MOST OF THE MORNING TO RETRACE HIS steps, an effort that sent him down several wrong streets and made him briefly fear that he was lost for good. Finally, he found the twisting lane he half remembered and followed it to its end.
Nahri was outside the apothecary, perched on a stool in a patch of sun. Though she’d veiled her face, Ali would have known her anywhere. There was a basket in her lap, and she was sorting through a pile of leafy twigs, separating out the green leaves like she’d been doing it for years. She seemed at peace, already back in the rhythms of her old life.
Then she glanced up. Relief rushed into her eyes, and Nahri shot to her feet, knocking over the bowl.
Ali crossed the street with equal haste. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I woke up, and I just needed to get away.” He dropped to his knees, trying to pick up the leaves she’d scattered. “I didn’t mean to startle you—”
Nahri grabbed his hands. “You didn’t startle me. I’ve been waiting out here, hoping you’d come back!”
Ali met her gaze over the overturned basket. “Oh.”
Nahri quickly let him go, averting her eyes as she knelt and stuffed the leafy twigs back into the basket. “I … when I woke up and you were gone, I wanted to go after you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me. I figured I’d wait a day, but then I was worried if I wasn’t outside, you’d never find the apothecary again …” She trailed off, stammering in a very un-Nahri-like way.
It wasn’t close to the anger Ali had been expecting to be greeted with. “Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”
Nahri was trembling. “I put that ring on your hand. I took you away from your family, your home.” He heard her voice catch. “When you left, I thought it might have been because you hated me.”
“Oh, God, Nahri—” Ali took the basket out of her hands, setting it aside and rising as he helped her to her feet. “No. Never. I was at the palace with you; I saw the same things. I don’t blame you for anything that happened that night. And I could never hate you,” he insisted, shocked that she could think so. “Not in a thousand years. By the Most High, I actually thought you might be happier if I stayed gone.”
It was her turn to look confused. “Why?”
“You’re free of us,” he said. “My family, the magical world. I thought … I thought if I was a good friend, it would be better to let you return to your life. Your human one.”
She rolled her eyes. “I dragged your burning body through the Nile for a whole damn day. Trust that I wouldn’t have done so if I wanted to get rid of you.”
Shame rushed through him. “You shouldn’t have had to. You shouldn’t have to keep saving me like this.”
Nahri stepped closer. She touched his hand, and Ali felt all the walls he’d bricked up around his broken spirit crash to the ground. “Ali … I thought I made very clear to you I never intended to let you out of my debt.”
Ali choked, a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. But it was tears that pricked his eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.” Ali couldn’t even say what “this” was. The enormity of how thoroughly his world had just been broken, the danger his loved ones were in, the impossibility of ever fixing it all … he knew no words to convey it.
“I know.” And indeed, there was no mistaking a wet glimmer in her eyes as well. Nahri dropped her hand. “Why don’t we take a walk? There’s a place I’d like to show you.”
6
NAHRI
“It’s the first thing I remember,” Nahri said softly, her eyes on the coursing river. “Like my life started the day I was lifted out of the Nile. The fishermen pounding my back to get the water out of my lungs, asking me what happened, who I was …” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the warm air. “Nothing. But I remember the sunlight on the water, the Pyramids against the sky, and the smell of mud like it was yesterday.”
They had returned to the Nile, walking its bank as fishermen and sailors brought their boats and nets ashore. After a while, the two of them had settled at the base of a towering palm tree, which was when Nahri had started talking, sharing stories about her old life.
Next to her, Ali was tracing patterns in the dust. He had barely spoken, a quiet shadow at her side.
“That’s the first thing you remember?” he
